


fall without blinking

by kissmeinnewyork



Series: our choice [2]
Category: Bodyguard (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Bodyguard, F/M, Fluff, Grief, Romance, What The Hell Have I Done, i truly hate myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 07:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15990569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissmeinnewyork/pseuds/kissmeinnewyork
Summary: It's not supposed to be an ending, really. It's supposed to be a beginning. (julia montague in a post-david world. au episode four.)





	fall without blinking

**Author's Note:**

> wow? i really hate myself
> 
> also apologies that this literally never refers to the conspiracy with the bomber that is in the programme, honestly cba with that. this is just purely shippy trash. regardless, hope u enjoy the musings of my depraved psyche x

It’s not supposed to be an ending, really. It’s supposed to be a beginning. At least—that’s what Julia presumes, squeezing David’s hand in the eerie calm before the storm. It’s supposed to be the start of no longer having to hide. It’s supposed to be the start of having a choice because, hell, she’s not had a whole lot of that lately.

Julia thinks it’s the beginning of everything falling into place.

But then it isn’t.

-x-

The explosion doesn’t feel real.

One minute she’s stood on the stage, carefully crafted speech in her hands, ready to make one of the most ambitious moves in her career. The next everything is moving at a million miles per hour—she can see David, legs pounding on the carpet. She barely registers him pulling her to the ground when the world blows up around her.

It’s like a film, the way debris flies and the smoke fills her lungs, her throat feeling like it’s crammed with sawdust. She can’t hear anything but a deep, intense ringing; she’s underwater, all sound blurring into a distorted mess of yells and fire ripping through wood. There’s pain everywhere, nothing specific, and when she raises her shaking hands she can see blood. And—she knows, _she knows,_ it isn’t hers.

David. David—

She dizzily rises to her feet because thank god, there’s nothing wrong with her spine or her legs, but it’s there that she can take in the full force of the destruction that’s just occurred around her. The stage is now unrecognisable and bodies are littered around like afterthoughts, smeared with blood and ash. Some of the crowd are gone, some are lying on the ground, in the shaky distance blurred bodies are pacing around manically. There are no emergency services yet, not that she can see, but she imagines London on high alert outside the doors of the auditorium. The thing she’s spent her career fighting _against._

Then she sees David.

He’s partly covered with rubbish, collapsed in the exact same place she was standing less than five minutes ago. Scrabbling over a desecrated podium she’s suddenly unaware of everything around her. All she can see is him.

“David!” she says, and she’s not sure if she’s whispering or yelling, because everything is so fucking _loud._ “David!”

Her limbs feel as fragile as falling leaves and it’s not difficult for her to totally crumble beside him, frantically grabbing his face in the hope of seeing some life in those eyes she’s come to know so well. His skin is smeared in blood and it only bleaches her own palms crimson, and she might be crying.

“David,” she says again desperately, “David, look. David. You saved me.”

For a moment, David’s head turns, lips parting. Her heartbeat surges, threatening to rip open her ribcage because maybe, maybe—

The breath leaves him and she feels his body go limp. Her hand smooths over his bloodied forehead. It’s then that a hand appears on her shoulder, and she sees the fluroscent green of paramedic uniforms, and the real world clicks back into motion again.

“You’ve got to help him,” Julia murmurs as she’s guided away, not sure if anyone is listening. “I think he might be dying…”

-x-

The last person she wants to see after all this is Roger but, as per bloody usual, he’s there—mouthing off at the world, yelling in the same vapid manner he used to shout at her. She’s learnt to block it out over the years and it’s pretty easy, usually, but every word he says feels like a bullet ramming into her skull.

“How could this have happened?” he snarls, pacing, spitting accusations into clinical white. Her legs still tremble as she sits on the edge of a stripped bed. She’s fine, mostly. Superficial cuts and bruises, a couple of stitches on her forehead. It’s not those wounds she’s worried about. “What are Protection Command even bloody for if they can’t spot a fucking _bomb?”_

Her eyes are dark as she looks up from her weak, vending-machine coffee and at her ex-husband. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Protection Command, Roger. Their professional conduct was impeccable.”

“Yeah, I know, but if they actually—“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Julia snaps, and Roger freezes, expression unreadable. “People are _dead,_ Roger! Good people! And PS Budd—“

“Still in surgery, as far as I’m aware.”

Julia shakes her head, tries not to think about his body laying prone right in front of her. “PS Budd endangered his own life to save mine. And I _know_ you’re going to say that’s what he’s there for, and maybe so, but…” she sighs, running a hand through her hair. She wonders how long it will take to wash the dust out. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“I know you, Julia,” Roger claims, even though he hasn’t know her for _years,_ “And before the explosion—what the hell was that speech about?”

Julia scoffs. “Are we really going to talk about my speech now? _Really?_ ”

“Yes, because everybody else will be. We know about your little visit to Chequers. Looks like Ms Montague might have a few ideas above her station, not like that’s a surprise. You were always one for biting off more than you could chew.”

It’s fights like this that made their marriage crack, the foundations crumbling away effortlessly beneath them. She’s always been ambitious and so has Roger. And that would have been fine if they didn’t spend their whole lives trying to politically outbid the other, desperately trying to claim more power. It sort of made them hate each other, by the end.

“Oh, fuck off, Roger,” she hisses, massaging her pounding temple. There’s been not one word of comfort or sympathy, not one inquiry after her wellbeing. And she’s fucking sick of it. “I’m not talking to you when you’re being like this.”

“You can’t escape this,” Roger says, stepping closer. He looms over her, because he feels more in control that way—another tick of their flawed relationship still raging. “The whole world is looking at you, Julia. Once the chaos of the bomb passes a lot more than just me will be asking how that speech was going to end.”

She’s the one who ends up breaking their minutes of intense, fraught eye contact. Roger huffs loudly before exiting the room, slamming through the double doors. She can see him in the corridor talking irritably with people she doesn’t know and police in high vis. Her life is becoming a circus.

The truth is, she thinks, examining the bandages wrapped round her burnt hands—she’s not thinking about her speech. It all seems so pointless now, Roger, the bill, Anne fucking Sampson and her team of inept counter-terrorism twats. Because she could—literally—just _die._

She thinks about squeezing Dave’s hand. Wonders if that was the last time she’ll ever get touch him and have him touch her back.

-x-

The hours that follow are whirlwinds of questions she doesn’t have the answers to and the haunting fear of the unknown. She paces up and down the harsh laminate of the hospital corridor as people organise her life for her. Every so often she’ll asking a passing nurse if _the police sergeant is okay_ and they either don’t know or confirm he’s still in theatre, and she finds herself circling back to square one.

She’s sitting on the hard plastic waiting room chair drumming her fingers when a police detective she knows as DS Rayburn enters. She looks effortlessly cool, facial expression barely wavering as her glance settles on Julia. She clasps her hand together.

“You should get some rest, ma’am.”

Julia laughs bitterly. It’s pretty easy to say she isn’t going to sleep tonight. “I’m not permitted to go anywhere by you lot anyway.”

“We’re arranging you transport back to the hotel,” DS Rayburn confirms, “It’s just taking some time, that’s all. You will be assigned a new SSO and address in the morning and we’ll continue the investigation then.”

“A new SSO? But David—PS Budd—will return as soon as he is able, yes?”

DS Rayburn’s brow furrows, like the suggestion is obvious. “Do you know…?”

“Do I know what, sergeant?” Julia replies, irritated by the vagueness of it all.

“I thought someone had told you,” Rayburn says, “Ma’am—PS Budd died in theatre less than an hour ago.”

-x-

_There’s an old, mostly broken radio in one of the cupboards in the hotel room that Julia’s absently noticed every time she’s been curious enough, and she’s never thought to use it until now. She wanders round, wearing just one of David’s work shirts and her knickers—she can feel him staring as she leans down to look._

_“What you got there?”_

_Julia refrains from replying until she turns around, wandering back over to the bed. She twists the dial and the speaker spits static, the haze of white noise oddly calming. Eventually the soft burr of an old The Smiths song plays. David raises an eyebrow._

_“Tell me, David,” Julia purrs, “Do you dance at all?”_

_David laughs loudly and Julia pouts, wondering what’s so hilarious about the question. “No, I do not.”_

_“You must have done once.”_

_“Not that I can recall.”_

_“Not even at your wedding?”_

_It’s probably a low blow, and Julia knows it’s a sore spot for him. The way his expression falters makes her wonder if he’s going to leave. But instead—he offers the smallest of smiles, like he’s letting something go. “Aye. I might have done.”_

_“Well,” Julia stands, offering him a hand, “Dance with me, Sergeant Budd.”_

_He hesitates, at first, but she smirks and her long, elegant fingers beckon him forward, and his inability to say no to her is probably why he’s in this situation in the first place. He groans, lifting himself up off the mattress. Let’s her hand take his._

_“You seem to know where your hands are supposed to go,” Julia remarks as she feels one hand cling to her waist, “Very impressive.”_

_“Vicky liked_ Strictly Come Dancing. _”_

 _She laughs as they both gently sway to the music, barely centimetres apart. The lyrics are sad but she’s never felt as whole as she does now, in the muted darkness of 3am. Maybe the last time she danced was her wedding, all those long, miserable years ago. She’s not had much time for it since. Or anyone to dance_ with.

_As the song transitions into a Fleetwood Mac number they pause for a moment, just looking at each other. David’s lips part, like he’s going to say something, but his jaw promptly clamps shut again. Her fingers skim his chest until the reach in the middle at the back of his neck, catch on the hair that grows at the nape._

_“Have you ever thought…” she starts, eyes flicking to his mouth, “Wished, that one moment could last forever?”_

_David breathes out deeply. “Maybe.”_

_“I haven’t. Well—I hadn’t. Everything I’ve ever done I’ve done for the future. Every move I make is effortlessly formulated to get me where I want to be tomorrow.” A beat. “But that was before you.”_

_The song plays on, a ballad about getting older and time moving on. It feels painfully apt._

_“Every morning I leave this room wondering if either of us will come back to it alive,” Julia says, “And then I think about only one of us coming back alive, and that… That hurts more, somehow. Living in a world that you are not a part of anymore seems impossible to me now.” She laughs bitterly, at herself more than anything else. “Is that pathetic?”_

_“No,” David murmurs, “It’s not pathetic to have feelings.”_

_“It’s just—my whole life, I’d just believed you couldn’t have ambition and emotion. One weighs the other down, you see. Emotions distract you from your ambition but ambition gives you no room for emotion. Even when I was married, it wasn’t an emotional thing. Maybe we thought it was, but really it was just as tactical as every speech I’ve ever done, every TV appearance I’ve made. We used each other to get where we wanted to be.” Julia freezes, and her hand curls round to hover over his heart. “But this… this has happened, between us, and it does nothing for me politically. If anything the scandal could ruin everything I’ve worked towards, and yet… I don’t want to let you go.”_

_(Maybe, after all this time, she’s finally discovered what it means to be in love.)_

-x-

She’s never felt anything like it, the chasm that opens in her stomach; it’s an empty, desolate sort of pain, desperate and sharp and unfathomable. And she has to stand there like there’s nothing wrong, like every moment behind closed doors the past few months has been a lie, happened to someone else. She blinks and nods at DS Rayburn, and the detective quietly leaves. She’s left in that empty waiting room for what feels like hours before the transport back to the hotel is ready. The tsunami that collides with her skeleton once the officer opens the door almost rips her open.

Because her hotel room looks the same. Like it did this morning. Before everything.

Julia slowly walks over to the bed and settles in the gentle dip of the mattress, runs her hands over her face. Today alone feels like its aged her twenty years, toppled her from her pedestal that she’s spent so much of her life working towards. Everything was going so well, and really, the fall from grace would be borderline comical if it wasn’t so fucking sad.

Her eyes catch the door on the other side of the room. The handle attracts her like a magnet, like it’s done every single night since she’s been here, and the dull ache throbs as she finds herself striding towards it. Her fingers clutch at the lock. Closes her eyes, rests her forehead against the wood, imagines David standing there on the other side. The first time she remembers it being thrilling, dangerous. The last time it felt like home.

The lock clicks, and suddenly every cell of her body is filled with _him._ His shirt laying ruffled on the bed, his deodorant knocked over on the dresser. She remembers with a jolt being tackled to the floor, his hands round her neck, but—but that wasn’t him, not really. That wasn’t his fault.

Him dying, though. Well. That’s very much her fault.

She covers her mouth before the first, shaky sob escapes her, wracking through her whole body like a convulsion. The rough, cheap carpet collides with her knees when she collapses, and then her palms are curling round the fabric; despair rattles her bones, and it’s a good job the rooms are soundproofed, because the last thing she wants is everyone to hear her _yell_ like a wounded animal. That’s the side of her only David Budd has seen, in the shooting and its terrible, empty aftermath, the first time she realised she’s not unbreakable.

So Julia Montague cries. And she cries, and cries, and cries. She wails more than she’s done in years—more than she’s done in her _life._ She cries until the last shred of energy within her dies and the only thing she can think to do is climb into his bed, exhausted in every sense of the word.

“Look what you’ve done to me, David Budd,” she says into the dark. The only reply is the hum of London traffic. Somehow, carelessly, _spitefully,_ the world is carrying on. She used to think everything revolved around her, the Home Secretary. Things like this put her ridiculous, privileged existence painfully in perspective.

She’s living in a post-David world. Apparently it’s not impossible, after all.

-x-

(The little, mostly broken radio sits balanced in the cupboard next to the mini-bar. When she moves out a day later, after the police have done their routine search, a housekeeper finds it and throws it in the bin.)

-x-

The new hotel is on the other side of the city but doesn’t look a whole lot different to the old one. There’s the same grey sheets on the bed, the same little bottles of wine in the mini-bar. The same fluffy white robe on the back of the door.

The new SSO is, however, completely different from the old one. PS John Braine is about the same age as David but has half the experience in his eyes; she barely looks at him because he’s only a reminder of what’s missing. It’s not his fault he’s falling into the shadow of a ghost.

She flicks on the news out of force of habit but of course—of course every segment is about the last twenty-four hours and how it’s changed everything. David’s photo appears on the screen alongside PC Knowles, the other police casualty. It’s the kind of report that rolls out after every terror attack—7/7, Manchester, London Bridge—and she’s never known any of the victims in person, the smiling Facebook photos of mums and dads and children. She, somehow, never thought she _would._

_“Police Sergeant David Budd and Police Constable Kimberley Knowles, members of Protection Command employed to personally protect the Home Secretary, were amongst those killed in the blast. It has been confirmed that PS Budd valiantly risked his own life to remove the Home Secretary from the direct path of the explosive. Budd was also the officer that protected Ms Montague during the Thornton Circus assassination attempt earlier in the year…”_

Her thoughts abruptly turn to David’s ex and his kids. They’ve probably been told, she assumes, but—seeing your father’s obituary all over the breakfast television must be a special kind of hell. All that because he was protecting _her._

A knock on the door jolts her out of her stupor. It’s PS Braine. Time to relive the events of yesterday in front of an audience of police officers.

-x-

_She doesn’t often think about what would happen if someone found out. She often doesn’t think with David, full stop—everything about their relationship has been unpredictable. She cringes when she relives their first interaction because sometimes she forgets that not everyone is out to tear her down; that his protection is for her own safety, not because she’s a damsel in distress. It’s laughable, really, how indestructible she thought she was. The Wicked Witch of Westminster. Being bitchy didn’t stop her from almost getting shot in the head._

_It’s nice to be spontaneous for once. It’s nice to fuck someone and not think about the consequences. Even if those consequences end up being in a poorly written front page of the_ Daily Mail.

_“You must have thought I was a right tight-arse when we first met,” she says, watching nonchalantly as David pours them both a whiskey. “I suppose you’ve read what they’ve said about me.”_

_David chuckles lightly and hands her a glass._

_“What’s so funny?” Julia asks, “I start as I mean to go on. I’m not a nice person, David. People don’t elect nice. Or they do, and they soon see that_ nice _doesn’t get bills passed through parliament. Nice people have their whole lives scrutinised by journalists in the hope of finding something not-so-nice in their past.”_

_“Is that a dig at Jeremy Corbyn?”_

_Julia shrugs, eyes looking at him over the rim of her glass. “Might have been.”_

_David smirks. “Who says I don’t still think you’re a tight-arse, Home Secretary?”_

_She flings a pillow at him but his reflexes are razor-sharp. Occupational hazard, she muses. He catches it, throws it back at her, before settling on the bed next to her. “I’d like to—I don’t want you to think I’m nice, because I meant it when I said that I wasn’t. But… You think I’m a_ good _person, right?”_

_His silence is a little unsettling, and Julia wonders if this whole time he’s just hated her because of what she believes in. She knows their views differ. She gets that, because outside all this, they’re from completely different worlds. But she wants him to understand that the things she believes in are because she wants to protect people. And that can’t possibly make her a bad person, right?_

_“Forget it,” she mutters, standing up. David’s eyes follow her. “Honestly, just say you think I’m an evil bitch and be done with it. I won’t get upset. I don’t have feelings, anyway.”_

_Julia turns her back on him and pretends she isn’t heartbroken. Seconds later, she feels the reassuring grip of his hand on her arm and she tenses angrily, wondering how they can be_ this _and not actually like each other._

_“Julia,” he says, her name almost a growl in his deep Scottish burr, “I’m not here, now, because of your politics.”_

_His hand trails down her arm until it meets her palm, his fingers curling round her own._

_“Then,” she starts, now facing him, “What are you here for, David?”_

_He cuts her off with a kiss. Sometimes it’s the best way to get her to stop talking._

-x-

The days that follow are a torturous combination of police interviews and hospital visits and people telling her she’s not fit to do her own fucking job. Mike Travis is loving every single glorious second of his new position, if his little appearances on the TV wishing her a _speedy recovery_ but no actual physical presence are anything to go by. Smug git, she mutters, as she switches his stupid mostly-bald head off her television screen. If she’d died…well, her corpse could still be _warm_ and he’d be throwing her office possessions into a pre-ordered skip.

She stopped asking for newspapers the third day one arrived with David’s face on the cover. It just serves as another cruel reminder that if they’d never met he’d still be alive. Because—every passing day, it doesn’t get easier. Serves her right for being happy, she supposes.

Her existence is just _frustrating,_ in limbo. The police investigation is going in circles because she can’t remember a thing (apart from him) and they can’t—won’t—tell her anything they find out. It just affirms how tragically lonely she is and has been for so long. No friends to speak of, an elderly mother she rarely contacts—it’s _pitiful._ There’s no-one to care about her. No-one that would miss her if this had all gone the other way.

But—there are people that miss David. It’s probably right that she meets them at some point.

PS Braine is not as experienced as David was and it shows in how easy it is to convince him to do something she’s absolutely not allowed to do. He’s more heart than head. When she makes an emotional plea to visit David’s grieving ex-wife he visibly softens and agrees to make the necessary arrangements discreetly. It happens quicker than she anticipates and before she realises, she’s stood outside Vicky Budd’s door with no semblance of a plan.

(Now this… This isn’t her at all. Her political life was built on the right words in the right places to initiate the right effect on the listener. This is Julia Montague at her most exposed. There is no fact-checked speech in her hands this time.)

Vicky Budd is much younger than she is but the events of the last few days have aged her; there are dark purple rings underneath exhausted eyes and skin white as alabaster. Her body is wrapped in a big grey cardigan, jaw dropping upon noticing who is stood on her door step.

“Are you…” she starts, blinking, “Are you supposed to be here?”

Julia smiles tightly. “Not really.”

Vicky rubs her eye. Opens her door wider. “Well, you better come in then.”

The Budd family home is much how Julia imagines it—it’s the kind of home she’s never had. Sentimental family photographs hang in every available space, smiling faces on beach holidays and in front of birthday cakes. There’s school portraits of their kids, the same ones she’s seen proudly tucked away in David’s wallet. Ella and Charlie, she remembers. Ten and eight.

(She lost her own dad at ten. It’s a kind of torture no kid should go through.)

“Would you like tea, or coffee?” Vicky asks politely, walking through to the kitchen. The house is surprisingly tidy despite everything. There are toys on the carpet and tiny socks on the radiator but she’d expected the aftermath of a hurricane. “It’s probably not what you’re used to, but…”

“Tea is fine, thank you,” Julia replies. She watches as Vicky fills the kettle and drops two teabags in chipped, striped mugs. There’s no interrogation, no bitterness, just the kind of muted familiarity Julia’s craved for God knows how long. It’s been so long since she’s actually felt normal. If only the situation wasn’t so incredibly awful.

Moments of silence pass between them, punctured by the hissing of the kettle.

“Vicky,” Julia says, breaking the tension, and Vicky looks up at her with wide, innocent eyes. “You’re… probably wondering why I’m here.”

“Not really,” Vicky responds by surprise. She passes her a mug. “You’re here about Dave.”

Well, she’s hit the nail on the head. There is something Julia can appreciate about directness. Vicky sits on a bar-stool and blows on her tea—Julia briefly wonders why the marriage collapsed. Sadly, she thinks, it was probably because of _David._ “Yeah. I am. I just… I’ve been thinking about you and your children. A lot, actually. Because I’m the reason that David won’t be coming back to you or them.”

Vicky sighs, drumming her fingers against her mug. “The thing is—and I think you understand this, Ms Montague—it was always a _when_ rather than an _if._ The day David never came home. I have spent years and years waiting for that day and yeah, it broke my heart, but… I was prepared for it. David was always going to die doing something he believed in. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Julia’s posture falls, because Vicky is right, and Vicky knows him better than she ever can. She smiles a little. “It’s a hell of a lot of debt to pay back. When someone gives their life for you.”

“David wouldn’t have seen it as a debt,” Vicky reassures calmly, “He would have seen it as his job. And… for what it’s worth, neither do I. The kids don’t understand yet, obviously, but I think they will in time.” Vicky reaches across the table for Julia’s hand and she lets her take it, squeezing gently. “I have seen the guilt that David carried with him every time he returned from Afghanistan and someone he knew didn’t. There is no shame in being a survivor, Ms Montague. And I think he’d want you to know that.”

Much like the unexpected way she’d ended up with David, Vicky’s arms are suddenly around her shoulders, and Julia finds herself holding the other woman close. There’s a resilience in being a Budd, Julia thinks. They are made of forgiveness and hope and compassion—they are made of everything she isn’t and maybe everything she should really be.

“You are so brave,” Julia murmurs, “Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“So are you,” Vicky says, leaning out of the embrace. There are tears on the younger woman’s cheeks. “And I think you can forgive yourself now.”

(Maybe she will, one day. Julia can see why David was so irrevocably in love with this woman—how he still was, underneath everything. How he always would be. And, perhaps… he was beginning to love her, too.)

-x-

_On the last night before the world ends they share a bottle of champagne Julia has had in her office for months—a misplaced gift from an aid who probably intended for said bottle to be shared with him. The bubbles go straight to her head and she feels weightless, head lolling onto David’s shoulder drunkenly._

_“I don’t deserve this,” she half-slurs, and she can feels David’s laughter spreading through his chest. “I don’t deserve you. You’re too good for me.”_

_“I’m far from perfect, Julia.”_

_“Yes, yes, I know that,” Julia mutters, “And I don’t care. Honestly. Because right here, right now… we’re drinking champagne and you’re smiling at me and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”_

_He drinks some of the champagne straight from the bottle and he wipes the froth off his lip with his sleeve. His arm curls round her, pulls her closer, and Julia thinks that maybe everything will be okay._

_“I love my job. For a while it was the only thing I had. And I was okay with that, but maybe, maybe I’m not anymore.”_

_David smirks. When he kisses her, he tastes like wine, bittersweet and beautiful. “I’m not going anywhere. Not that you’d let me.”_

_“Too right,” Julia agrees, grabbing his mouth in another quick kiss. “You’re staying where I can see you, Sergeant.”_

-x-

The funeral is the following Tuesday. It’s the first time she’s been seen in public since the explosion and people mutter, exchanging glances as she stares at her feet surrounded by security and aids and fucking _Roger._ He doesn’t think she should be here, that he’s just an SSO and people have died around her before, burying the knife deeper. It’s really too bad that she’s given up on listening to a word he says.

(Vicky smiles at her and she knows she’s done the right thing.)

When she gets back to the hotel she neatly folds her funeral dress back into the cupboard and changes into her pyjamas. She pours a large whiskey, let’s her eyes close for a second before pulling out her laptop. Slowly, gradually, she begins to read the emails that have lay unopened in her inbox for the last week and a half or so.

This is how she copes. This is how she moves on. This is how she _lives._

There is no shame in having feelings. Being a survivor.

 _David Budd,_ she thinks fondly, _look what you’ve done to me._


End file.
